Naples

Naples Highlights

April 26-30, 2007

Thursday

• Ross, Vilas and I arrive, rent the car, drive around looking for food, drive back to the airport for Vivek.
• In a near-empty airport parking lot, Ross awkwardly parks the car in the space directly in front of another car.

• We go inside to eat at the airport Chili's, where Vivek meets us.
• Back at the car, Ross and Vilas get in the front seats; I get in the back and shove my backpack across Vivek's side before he gets in, and say "sorry, no room back here Vivek, I'm sure you can just take a cab or something."
• Vivek puts my bag on the pavement outside the car, closes the door and says "OK! Let's go."
• Ross starts to pull out. Vivek says "wait, wait, wait," and opens the door, grabs my bag, repositions it on the pavement, and says "OK, now you can go."
• Target run, during which Vivek keeps appearing as a blur whizzing past the ends of aisles riding on the shopping cart. Being a gentleman, he gives me a ride as well.
• Ross, upon finding Vilas in the fruit snacks aisle at Target, says "Aha, I knew I'd find you in the fruit section!"
• Packing the trunk of the car with our Target goodies, we sing the Tetris theme, and Ross says "this bottom layer should have disappeared by now!"
• Off to McDonald's for dessert while we kill time waiting for my lost checked luggage to arrive.
• As we are leaving McDonald's, something prompts me to say "you never know" in what revisionist historians will later recall as a shrill, creepy voice.
• Back to the airport to get my bag.
• Condo time! We play Guess Who: ASH Edition and watch TV and then I pass out, while the boys go to the pool (and then come back to put up a hideous 5th grade photo of me as my Facebook profile picture, which I don't discover until Sunday night).

Friday

• Pool it up at the clubhouse
• Airport to pick up G-man
• BBQ
• Guess Who

• G introduces us to some lethal Chinese drinking games involving dice (the shot glass game and the beer-pong-with-dice game)

• Play a few rounds of Asshole, in which Vivek tries to sound ghetto by pronouncing "queen" as "qui-zeen" and realizing it just sounds like he admires the food.At one point during his Asshole presidency, Gaurav orders Ross to “drink for being happy!” I ALMOST get away with pretending to have finished my can of beer.Hey, it wasn’t MY fault I had to clear cups 2-5 in Gaurav’s stupid dice game.

The Menon brothers play drinking games AND prevent the walls from collapsing on us!







Trash-talking during the drinking games:
G: You guys are drinking really slowly
Vivek: Slower than YOU!
G and Ross: Yeah, that's kinda the problem....

• Take the party to the clubhouse at 3AM for pool and hot tub time! We play broachball, which is enhanced by the naming of the five positions: Air Horn, Twitch, Shorts, Army Knife and Sneaker. We show solidarity by harmonizing while singing the names of our positions.
• New expressions evolve as balls are dropped:
• Vilas-"I Erinned it up royally."
• Ross-"I Erinned it up big-wise."

Saturday

Vilas and I are so close, we shop in each other's closets!

• Waffle House: As Gaurav is paying, he replies to Vivek's Borat quote by saying "King in the Castle!" while looking directly at the waiter and handing him the bill.
• BEACH TIME featuring:
• Tossing the ball around in the water

• Building sandcastles (Queen Erinn sandcastle and the satellite, Turd Island)

• Throwing clumps of wet sand on Jessi when she asks if she can help build the sandcastle
• W^2--Water Whomping (a group effort of Ross carrying me into the cold water and plopping me down, and abandoning me to resume his sandcastle building, followed by Vivek and Gaurav tossing me back and forth to one another while making circus noises and saying things like "and now for the reverse corkscrew!" before spinning and hurtling me into the water)
• The W^2 is not entirely without educational merit, since G and Vivek show me how to trip a person underwater

• Dairy Queen (I make the mistake of telling Ross that my brother used to annoy me when we were kids by singing "A Blizzard, A Blizzard, A Blizzard, A Blizzard" in reference to Dairy Queen; Ross repeatedly sings this, and even worse, later we all end up singing it in a round)
• Cracklin' Jacks: We find out some Dolphins player is eating a couple tables away from us, and Gaurav mentions, "it's like looking in a mirror.” Meanwhile Vilas says shhhhhh to the hush puppies. When I go to put on my “jacket,” I realize I’ve carried in two pairs of black pajama shorts instead (Vilas later wears a pair in the car "for warmth").

• Coldstone (on our way there, G air-high fives the hand on the "don't walk" street light).
• Vivek and Gaurav make fun of my dog tshirt that has a closeup of the puppy's head, saying that if I were a dog that would be me, without it being a in a weird perspective; Ross randomly starts nudging me with his head and making cat noises, prompting questions such as, “Who are you, Kristin?”
• Hot Fuzz—excellent movie
• During previews
• Vivek: (reading "fathomevents") "FAT HOME EVENTS?"
• Jessi: (viewing "please silence your cell phones now" message) "Please silence your Viveks now?"
• When sound goes nearly mute during the ad for The Matrix on DVD, the "coming in Dolby surround sound" and "check out our new sound" messages become ironic.
• Back at the condo, we watch some Ali G DVDs for the Borat skits, then watch the Extras episode with Patrick Stewart ("But I've seen everything!")

Sunday

• Broachball in the pool

• Pool diving caution signs (silhouette of woman diving)--"no hand shadow puppets," "no A-cups"
• Outback for late lunch/early dinner; signing the cheesy Hallmark cards we got for the ASH who are teachers retiring--Nicastro, Van der Jagt, McGuire—and putting our analysis notes in the margin of the poem on Nicastro’s card
• Vilas speaks in German and pseudo-German after reading Gaurav's "MIT Sloan" shirt as “Mit Sloan!”
• Take G and Vivek to airport (good riddance!)
• Ross, Vilas and I watch TV at the condo, play Guess Who, and go out for Wings to celebrate the departure of the "dead weight"
• Vilas tells me "JD, you're carrying a lot of tension in that bra strap--want me to loosen it for you?"
• Ross, Vilas and I are blown away by the sheer brilliance that is encapsulated in the movie "Funky Monkey". Of course, we also play Scan and Guess Who.

Other random stuff:

• Playing the Chinatown toy, and singing it in a round ("dad don't mind," "I don't lie," and instrumental versions all accepted)
• Cheering by doing Jen's army waving/clicking thing
• Superhero friends and their strengths, weaknesses and battle cries (e.g., Mama's "I'm fixin' to srve the day!")
• Vilas: "Oh, water....drowner of children...."
• Top Guess Who questions:
• If this person were a food, would they taste bitter?
• Was this person's dad an asshole?
• Does this person think they're cooler than they are?
• If this person were on a billboard, would the caption be WTF?
• If this person were a piece of something, would it be shit?
• If this person were a dog, would they be a bitch?
• Has Gaurav's mom made fun of this person?

Also, as a lasting legacy, we offer this broachball instructional guide:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blTVKjKG4xM